How Obama Botched the Oil Spill

Can you believe that with tens of thousands of livelihoods in the balance that the important decision is held up and blocked because of some turtles about to be overwhelmed anyway by the oil spill?

Today, a six month moratorium is imposed on thousands of additional families for what is a political gesture.

BP’s recklessness is apparent for all to see. Thirty thousand safely drilled wells suggest that the rest of the industry does not share that culture which is about to be radically transformed anyway.

In the end, most of the damage on the GulfCoast will be laid at the doorstep of the federal government and the presidency itself for executive inaction. They did nothing!

BP is going to be able to show how their best efforts were thwarted by the government itself. What a perfect defense. Yes your honor, we had all these resources on standby to solve the problem, but the federal government on the third instance refused to let us deploy. We ask that our liability to be limited only to the brief time in which we were allowed to deploy.

This story is heartbreaking and it is a rerun of Katrina. All we need now is a category five hurricane to hit the Delta again

It’s one thing to say that President Obama’s administration showed its ineptitude and mismanagement in its handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. It is quite another to grasp the situation up close, as I did during a recent visit to Alabama.

According to state disaster relief officials, Alabama conceived a plan — early on — to erect huge booms offshore to shield the approximately 200 miles of its coastline from oil. Rather than install the relatively light and shallow booms in use elsewhere, the state (with assistance from the Coast Guard) canvassed the world and located enough huge, heavy booms — some weighing tons and seven meters high — to guard its coast.

But … no sooner were the booms in place than the Coast Guard, perhaps under pressure from the public comments of James Carville, uprooted them and moved them to guard the Louisiana coastline, instead.

So, Alabama decided on a backup plan. It would buy snare booms to catch the oil as it began to wash up on the beaches.

But … the Fish and Wildlife Administration vetoed the plan saying it would endanger sea turtles that nest on the beaches.

But … OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Agency) refused to allow them to work more than 20 minutes out of every hour and required an hour-long break after 40 minutes of work, so the cleanup proceeded at a very slow pace.

The short answer is that every agency — each with its own particular bureaucratic agenda — was able to veto each aspect of any plan to fight the spill with the unintended consequence that nothing stopped the oil from destroying hundreds of miles of wetlands, habitats, beaches, fisheries and recreational facilities.

Where was the president? Why did he not intervene in these and countless other bureaucratic controversies to force a focus on the oil, not on the turtles and other incidental concerns.

According to Alabama Gov. Bob Reilly, theadministration’s “lack of ability has become transparent” in its handling of the oil spill. He notes that one stellar exception has been Obama aide Valerie Jarrett, without whom, he says, nothing whatever would have gotten done.

Eventually, the state stopped listening to federal agencies and just has gone ahead and given funds directly to the local folks fighting the spill rather than payingattentionto the directives of the Unified Command. Apparently, there is a world of difference between the competence of the Coast Guard and the superb and efficient regular Navy andmilitary.

Now, the greatest crisis of all looms on the horizon, as hurricanes sweep into the gulf. Should one hit offshore, it will destroy all the booms that have been placed to stop the oil from reaching shore. And there are no more booms anywhere in the world, according to Alabamadisasterrelief officials.

The political impact of this incompetence has only just begun to be felt. Whileadministrationoperatives are flying high after a week in which the president’s ratings rebounded to 49 percent in Rasmussen after his firing of Gen. McChrystal, the oil is still gushing and the situation is about to worsen.

The obvious fact is that Obama has noexecutiveexperience, and neither do any of his top advisors. Without a clear mandate from the top, needed efforts to salvage the situation are repeatedly stymied by well meaning bureaucrats strictly following the letter of their agency policy and federal law. The result, ironically, of their determined efforts to protect the environment has been the greatest environmentaldisasterin history. But some turtles are OK!